Cuba’s crumbling infrastructure no match for might of Irma
CUBA - Havana was in midnight darkness and the floodwaters were neck-high were Yanelis Rodríguez finally gave up hope that help was on its way.
As giant waves crashed over the Malecón seawall just 200m away, Rodríguez and her two young children waded through Hurricane Irma’s storm surge to safety. “The winds started in the afternoon. We’d waited so long because we just assumed the government would come and help us,” she said. “We got out of the water and sheltered in a nearby building.” It was a harrowing night: in the early hours of the morning an iron girder crashed down onto the roof above them. Yanelis ran into the street, before changing her mind and going back inside: it was too dangerous to seek refuge elsewhere. Irma hit Cuba as a category 5 hurricane and barrelled through the central and western provinces, causing catastrophic destruction in a country that prides itself on disaster preparedness. At least 10 people died Cuba’s worse hurricane death toll since Hurricane Dennis killed 16 in 2005. Seven of the fatalities were in Havana, whose decaying historic buildings were no match for the force of the storm. And as as uprooted trees were hauled away, and electricity returned to more neighbourhoods, many in the Cuban capital were asking whether authorities were ready for another storm. Two brothers, Roydis and Walfrido Valdés, died instantly in their central Havana apartment when a huge block of concrete fell from four storeys above them. The fire brigade arrived a few hours later to pull their mangled corpses from the wreckage. But more than a dozen people remain living in the 100-year-old building. An elegant marble staircase with an ornate iron banister leads up to the first floor where the brothers died. Cracks between bricks in the wall are many inches wide. The floor is sunk and uneven. Like many of Havana’s once-elegant buildings, it is home to dozens of families but has recieved little maintenance in years.
(Theguardian.com)